thinghood and static substance, between entelecheia as being active within the end/telos and entelecheia as telos in static completedness, between ἐνέργεια as being-at-work and ἐνέργεια as “complete reality.” Note here the startling juxtaposition of the traditional-inherited (TI) translation and the (RR) refreshing-retrieving translation.
I summarize here:
TI: “Potentiality” (δύναμις) is “passive, inert, static potentiality.” “Actuality” (ἐνέργεια) is derived from “activity” and has the meaning of “complete reality” or points to the completed reality (ἐντελέχεια). When complete(d), it is static, a static “result.”
RR: The formless δύναμις is just that: dynamic, moving and never static. The telos/end is being-at-work (ἐνέργεια). Thus what we usually think of as the end – as complete and done, with nothing happening or in movement – is simply not what Aristotle says: ἐνέργεια is not some static result. The activity of things forms a continuous state of being-at-work (ἐν+ἒργον or ἐνέργεια). And this being-at-work (dynamic unfolding) continues in the end. This is what Aristotle means by ἐντελέχεια: a being unceasingly at-work in the τέλος/end. The end is still dynamically unfolding.
Let us now look at several passages from Aristotle:
1. 1045b32 δύναμις-dynamis … ἐντελέχεια: being-at-work-in-telos … ἔργον: at-work.
The traditional translations use such words as (passive) “potency” and “complete reality” or “actuality” or “completedness.” But Sachs translates this passage this way:
but in another way in virtue of potency and complete being-atwork and of a doing-something.
I note here that Sachs does not open up δύναμις-dynamis as much as I see possible. Dynamis is nothing passive. It is also not material. Rather it is a dynamic of possibility that belongs to everything.